Policies on blogging, in my opinion, seem largely dependent on the nature of the institution and the regulation of communication to protect its interests. The three institutions I chose to analyze are IBM, Sun Corporation, and Harvard. The first two should serve to demonstrate that two companies of similar interests have similar policies on blogging. The last example shows how a different institution, such as an academic one, could vary in its interests and therefore its policy.
Wow. That was very dry and boring! I felt like I was falling asleep in (a non - IST110) class again... Essentially, What are companies afraid could be leaked through blogs? Why wouldn't this bother a University? Now may be the time to press the "Wow that was Easy!" button next to your stapler.
Starting with IBM's policy, linked here, thanks to James Snell of the IBM blog as of 2005.
IBM has been a leader in pioneering new technologies for a long time. When blogging became popular, and most importantly when companies began trying to shut it down internally, IBM supported its employees. They were encouraged to blog for the purpose of applying open-exchange learning and for contributing to the company PR. They issued guidelines, not rules, for blogging safely. Highlights include:
- If you publish a blog or post to a blog and it has something to do with work you do or subjects associated with IBM, use a disclaimer such as this: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions."
- Don’t provide IBM’s or another’s confidential or other proprietary information.
- Don't pick fights, be the first to correct your own mistakes, and don't alter previous posts without indicating that you have done so.
- Try to add value. Provide worthwhile information and perspective.
They just ask that you protect the company from your personal opinions, and that you be the type of blogger the company would be proud to say they hire.
Sun Corporation agrees wholeheartedly with IBM in this regard. They take it one more step down, from guidelines to even more informal "advice". The Sun Corp. policy highlights include (full document here):
- It's a Two-Way Street The real goal isn't to get everyone at Sun blogging, it's to become part of the industry conversation. So, whether or not you're going to write, and especially if you are, look around and do some reading, so you learn where the conversation is and what people are saying. If you start writing, remember the Web is all about links; when you see something interesting and relevant, link to it; you'll be doing your readers a service, and you'll also generate links back to you; a win-win.
- Write What You Know The best way to be interesting, stay out of trouble, and have fun is to write about what you know. If you have a deep understanding of some chunk of Solaris or a hot JSR, it's hard to get into too much trouble, or be boring, talking about the issues and challenges around that. On the other hand, a Solaris architect who publishes rants on marketing strategy, or whether Java should be open-sourced, has a good chance of being embarrassed by a real expert, or of being boring.
For the sake of repetition, I didn't post statements that overlapped with the IBM policy, but they also talk of disclaimers and protecting private information. They want an employee to make the company look good!
Now to take a large step out of the box, I'm going to explore a university's blogging policy, specifically Harvard's. Full article here, highlights below:
- Rights in the Content You Submit: Unless you specify otherwise, any and all works of authorship copyrightable by you and posted by you to any blog (“Content”) are submitted under the terms of an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons Public License. Under this license, you permit anyone to copy, distribute, display and perform your Content, royalty-free, on the condition that they credit your authorship each time they do so.
- By posting your Content using the Services, you are granting Harvard a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, and worldwide license to use your Content in connection with the operation of the Services, including, without limitation, the license rights to copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate and reformat your Content, and/or to incorporate it into a collective work.
- You agree that you will not knowingly and with intent to defraud provide material and misleading false information. You represent and warrant also that the content you supply does not violate these Terms, and that you will indemnify and hold Harvard harmless for any and all claims resulting from content you supply.
As you may have guessed from pieces of their policy, Harvard wants to protect itself like every other company, but Harvard has a larger interest: rights. Harvard assumes that most blogging will take place for research purposes, and therefore wants rights to that knowledge as intellectual property of the student, and for the bigger picture, the University.
The funny thing is that all of these, but especially companies, are wasting there time in some cases with these policies.After reading a blog by an Apple employee, I answered one of the questions that has been forming in the back of my mind since the beginning of this discussion. Posted here, he forcefully, and at times crudely, explains why Apple Corp. has no official blogging policy. Essentially, He asserts that you don't need one if you have a comprehensive policy on communication already. They overlap. A policy that defines what can and can't be discussed with members outside of the company naturally covers blogs, which can be read by anyone. The writer may need a reminder of their "universal" audience from time to time, but according to chuqui, the alias of the author of this blog, most parts of a blogging policy are already covered in some other policy agreement.
This doesn't mean that the valuable advice inside the policies above shouldn't be given by a company to its employees. Also, it doesn't necessarily apply to a University setting, because of the nature of education and the need for shared learning. One reason might simply be that students and grad students don't sign contracts to become students with communication restrictions.
I think a good standard practice would be a disclaimer for the company, and in general to blog about topics you feel you know well. If forced to make a strong opinion, do it in a way you would let your boss read. Remember, your content is your responsibilty. If you develop an online presence that is respected, then you have succeeded in this goal, because few people read blogs that are rude and respect them.
I found this exercise a little trying, but altogether helpful in developing awareness about what is expected if I were to continue blogging in the workplace. This is always very important to me: defining real world applications for whatever I learn in school. Shouldn't that be everyone's goal?